I hesitate to even mention this, in part because it’s a classic non-story, and in part because I suspect the target of the story would much prefer that people stop talking about. But once in a while, I assume readers want to know what the political world is buzzing about and today’s topic du jour is a comment Mickey Kantor made 16 years ago. Or, more accurately, didn’t make 16 years ago.
The video has since been removed from YouTube, but there was a clip that was drawing all kinds of interest this morning of Kantor, Bill Clinton’s Trade Representative and a long-time Clinton ally, talking to James Carville and George Stephanopoulos in the 1992 documentary, “The War Room.”
As the three were reviewing election results, the video showed Kantor commenting on the numbers out of Indiana. The remarks were less than clear, so the person who posted the clip to YouTube captioned the video, and attributed some ugly rhetoric to Kantor.
A former aide to President Bill Clinton, and current informal adviser to Sen. Hillary Clinton, expressed outrage and shock on Friday after a videotape from 1992 surfaced allegedly showing him describing Indianans as “white n****rs.”
Mickey Kantor, who served as campaign chairman during Clinton’s 1992 run for the White House and says he has offered help and advice to Sen. Clinton, insisted that the tape was a fraud and that he was exploring legal steps against the individual who posted it online.
“I’ve never used that word in my entire life, ever, under any circumstance, ever,” an angry Kantor told The Huffington Post, citing his and his parent’s work fighting for civil rights. “I have listened to [the video] and so have you. You can’t tell what it is I’m saying in that second sentence, you can’t decipher that.”
Indeed, a review of the original copy of the 1993 film The War Room, from which the excerpt was taken (around the 4:40 mark) is virtually inaudible. The sound suggests, if anything, that instead of saying “How would you like to be a worthless white n****r?” Kantor says, “How would you like to be in the White House right now?”
I’ve seen that movie a hundred times, and after hearing about this earlier today, I thought, “How could I possibly have missed this?” But I didn’t, because Kantor didn’t say it.
The same clip purported to show Kantor calling the people in Indiana “sh-t.” D.A. Pennebaker, director of the documentary, told Ben Smith that the since-removed clip is wrong.
“He does not say that. He does not say that,” said Pennebaker, after viewing the clip.
He said the initial expletive referred to the anticipated reaction in the Bush White House to the fact that Ross Perot’s polling numbers were holding strong.
“What he says is he’s surprised Perot’s numbers are holding,” said Pennebaker in a brief phone interview. “He says they must be shi**ing in the White House.”
The second expletive, he said, appeared to have been entirely fabricated, with new audio dubbed onto the original movie.
Needless to say, Kantor is not amused by this effort to smear him.
Kantor, on Friday, insisted that the latter part of his statement never took place and that it made no sense for him to use such language.
“Indiana was not even on our radar screen,” he said, “And I was talking about the polling and not the people… If you look at The War Room, this is not the way Carville or George interpreted my statement. This is frankly libelous.”
And if you’re curious to see the actual footage from the movie, here’s an excerpt. Kantor’s appearance comes at around the 4:37 mark.
I hate to see this happen to anyone, but Kantor’s a good guy who really didn’t deserve this. We can hope this nonsense is quickly forgotten.